


The Early Hours

by letthebookbegin



Category: Lockwood & Co. - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Gen, but i've never written anything not gen so i'd feel weird tagging it as that haha, slight lucewood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 04:36:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8783401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letthebookbegin/pseuds/letthebookbegin
Summary: The early hours of the morning, just before dawn, are the in-between hours; before the stars disappear, after the sky begins to lighten. Before the adults wake, after the agents start making their way home. For the agents of Lockwood and Co, both current and former, it is a time for reflection.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic probably comes the closest I will ever get to writing romance, haha. I've reread it too many times to know if it's good or not anymore, so I'm just posting it. Feedback is appreciated!

London is a different world in the early hours of the morning. There's the ghosts, of course; but even apart from that the city feels foreign. Things look different in the dark, bleached of colour, shadows distorting their shapes. It is a time when the familiar hides, and the hidden comes to light. A time when stillness settles, the in-between time when agents are done with their work for the night and others still sleep, when the sky is starting to lighten but the stars have not yet faded, a time for reflection for the current and former agents of Lockwood and Co.

Lucy Carlyle feels unwelcome thoughts creep along the back of her neck into her mind. The air is cold and the skies clear, stars twinkling on her from above, and for once even the skull is quiet. It is usually at this time, when she treads the dark roads to her flat after a night’s work, that she usually starts to think of home. Not the cold flat that’s waiting for her, nor the house she shared with her mother and sisters; somehow, without her noticing, _home_ has come to mean 35 Portland Row and its inhabitants. It’s not as if she can keep them from her mind the other times of day; she sees George in the research she performs herself now, in the takeaway food that seem a world away from his dishes; sees Lockwood’s hand guiding hers as she swings her rapier, hears his voice as she dives and weaves out of a deadly situation; she even begins to miss Holly, wondering if they’d have been friends if they had met differently, if she’d stayed. No, her days are littered with thoughts of them, but they are thoughts dismissed in favour of hunger, or work, or sleep, until the lonely road that walks her home in the early morning. It is at times like this that she has to remind herself of the hollow boy, of the reasons she left, reasons that seem, for the moment, insubstantial. She watches the stars slowly disappear, and imagines she walks home.

George Cubbins, more often than not these days, faces the early hours with a quiet rage. It doesn’t take much for annoyance to flare in him, but real anger has always been a rarity; it’s strange, feeling it take root in him. What else can he feel, though, watching his team? Watching the way his oldest friend rushes into danger almost with relish, remembering how his expression had fractured that day, when he had walked downstairs with an apology on his lips and she was already gone. Their first job after she had left found Lockwood doling out their tasks, and her name was halfway out of his mouth before he remembered she was gone. He remembers the look on his face; the moment full of too many emotions to count before the shutters closed, a smile ready on his lips as he moved on from his mistake. It’s not the first time George has seen it happen, but watching the shutters fall because of a person who was still alive, not like his parents or his sister, not like poor Robin, leaves him fuming. So yes, he is angry at her; for his best friend, for his team, for himself. He doesn’t admit he wishes she were back anyway.

Holly Munro feels guilt. She keeps slightly more normal hours than the others, but the dark sky is by no means unfamiliar to her, and the guilt she feels is familiar too. She sees the hole Lucy has left behind in the fractured team that awaits her every day, and she can’t help but feel it is her fault. So she tries; she tries to fill in the gaps, to make the team whole again, but she is the wrong shape for the holes and she cannot fit. Still, she keeps up the mask on her face, lets the others see her smile. She is the only one certain Lucy will come back, and she is determined to keep the team together until she returns.

For Anthony Lockwood, it is a time he dreads. He hasn’t stopped, ever since that day; hasn’t stopped running, fighting, hiding. The adrenaline shoots through his body as he dodges death yet again, and he relishes in the release from thinking – from listening to Holly’s concerns, George’s anger that hides his worry, from remembering she’s gone. It’s the early morning he hates the most now, the time when his distractions fall away, and he inevitably ends up thinking of her. It’s not that he’s never lost anyone before, but there’s a difference between having someone taken from him by death and having someone leave willingly. He thinks of her, and it hurts more than he cares to admit. So he runs, and he fights, and he hides; but the early morning comes, inevitably, every night, and though the ghosts are behind him and George is waiting with a worried lecture ahead, nothing walks alongside him but thoughts of her.

They watch, these children, as the sky lightens and dawn approaches, as the stillness passes, each with different thoughts circling their minds – and then the sun rises, and they go on, living the rush of life that is all too familiar to agents. Life moves faster again, and the next early morning still waits.


End file.
